Thicker Than Water

I took one step, not towards him but towards the parapet, thinking that if he looked like he was going to jump I might have a moment in which to tackle him from the side and push him back onto the walkway before he could fall. I kept my stare fixed on him the whole time, and that Stimrom movement brought his face into profile so that I suddenly realised who it was: the blond boy who’d given me directions the first time I’d come here.

‘Bic,’ I called softly. He didn’t respond, didn’t seem to have heard.

His eyes were wide and staring, and he didn’t blink.

I took another step, and then another, trying not to make a sound. If he was in some kind of a trance, waking him up was probably the last thing I wanted to do.

When I was almost close enough to touch him, he spoke. ‘Gonna get hurt,’ he murmured, his tone mild and contemplative.

I didn’t know if it was a warning or a complaint. I didn’t much care, either. If it was a warning then I was going to ignore it: if he was lamenting his own situation, then he’d probably thank me when he woke up.

If he woke up.

As his knees flexed, I lunged. His feet were already off the ground when I caught him around the waist, but he weighed nothing and my momentum more than made up for his. We went sideways, not out and down, and I rolled as I fell so that I didn’t squash the breath out of the boy or slam him head-first into the concrete. As a result I landed awkwardly, my forearm and elbow making jarring contact with the ground so that for a moment I was focused only on my own pain.

In that moment, Bic struggled free with a yell of surprise and alarm. He scrambled away from me on his arse and his elbows, his face making up for its earlier immobility by running through about a dozen expressions in as many seconds. Then he looked down at the cold concrete he was sitting on, at his hands and at the livid moon staring us down from over the shoulder of Weston Block. Something made a pat-pat-pat sound, very close, like soft applause, but there was nobody on the walkway except the two of us.

‘Shit,’ Bic said, in a tone of simple, stunned disbelief.

‘You’re okay,’ I said, unnecessarily. ‘You were sleep-walking. ’ It wasn’t enough, but maybe it would cover the basics.

‘I’m—’ he began. ‘I’m - not - where am I? Who are you? You keep the fuck away from me or I’ll lamp you. What did you do to me?’"

"‘I stopped you from jumping,’ I said.